An enclosure management controller (EMC), also commonly referred to as a backplane controller, can be used with a storage backplane to decode protocol information in management information coming from a host bus adapter (HBA)/RAID controller. The EMC can manage drive slots on the storage backplane based on the protocol information. For example, the EMC can manage status indicator LEDs corresponding to the drive slots. An EMC may control 4-8 drive slots using side-band communication carrying SGPIO, SES, SAF-TE, or custom user-defined protocol. Serial interfaces can be used to carry management information associated with drive slots that connect mass storage devices to the storage backplane. Multiple motherboards may be required in order to provide for control of a large number of drive slots, for example in the context of cloud computing. Among other existing needs, there exists a need for a flexible architecture allowing multiple connected EMCs to each control multiple drive slots, without requiring all of the EMCs to be connected to motherboards in order to receive enclosure management data.
Therefore, a heretofore unaddressed need still exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.